Eddystone Beacon – sensors and interfaces

Eddystone Beacon – legal stuff

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Eddystone Beacon – from the inside

Eddystone beacon – antenna & ground plane

Inside the Eddystone Beacon is an inferred F antenna. On a closer look it is not just a copy of a common public antenna design. The F structure is not a straight line or a meander. It is a round curve in parallel to a round small round ground plane. Moreover, the antenna structure is not linear. It shrinks from top to the end.
The ground plane is as large as it can practically be inside the small BLE beacon. The metal battery holder is a part of the ground plane as well. Just open any BLE beacon you already own and compare it yourself. Open it if you can 😉 as Some BLE beacons are glued. It is a shame – if the beacon is glued it is impossible to replace the coin cell battery.

Eddystone Beacon – top and bottom view

Eddystone beacon inside

The BLE beacon is optimised for RF performance and price. The self-made interfered F antenna will save the cost of a ceramic chip antenna. The two black drops on the PCB save the cost of enclosing the integrated circuit. The production and test of two ICs is too expensive. This BLE beacon holds the semiconductor die directly on the PCB and the semiconductor die is bonded directly onto the PCB!
The plastic enclosure is split in two parts. The top of the enclosure is flexible and will form a perfect seal. As a result, this beacon is water-resistant.

Furthermore I can help you with the schematic diagrams of the Eddystone beacon. You can also take the source code and rework it to your own requirements. You are free to make a one-to-one copy, but your have no chance of producing it more cheaply.
If you are interested in samples in order to test this Eddystone Beacon, or in analysing another BLE beacon, or if your requirement is to analyse some other wireless IoT hardware, or if you are studying or developing of some kind of wireless IoT device, then do not hesitate to drop an email to harald.naumann (at) gsm-modem.de

Note: You can get the Eddystone beacon with other beacon profiles like the iBeacon format as well. As already mentioned earlier in this post – you can change the source code to and protocol as you wish as it is an “open beacon format”.

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Why I wrote the IoT M2M Cookbook

In my more than 20 years working with a manufacturer and in distribution I gave the same hints and recommendations to developers of wireless applications again and again. In May 2012 I made the decision to write the story that I have to tell weekly to customers in a book. The target is to guideline developers from the idea for an IoT / M2M device to a final product with mass production.
http://www.gsm-modem.de/M2M/m2m_iot_cookbook/